


the neon limelight

by starlight_sugar



Category: Neoscum (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 22:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17129522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: The story behind Neoscum is like something out of a movie. (Or, a day in the life of a rock band.)





	the neon limelight

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the AUcember series, a self-made challenge where I try to write a new AU one-shot every day. You can read all of the AUcember fics in the collection linked above.
> 
> All my love to Tam, who knows things about journalism and sent me good examples of profiles so I could sort of try not to butcher this.

In the front of Xanadu, the infamous semi-truck-turned-tour-bus, there is a letterboard hanging precariously from the top of the cabin. It’s a smaller version of the kind that you’ll see outside movie theaters and churches, the kind that would light up if it were plugged in. This board isn’t plugged in, and it’s held in place with a combination of nails and duct tape. The message is changed once a week, by a different member every time. This week, the letterboard reads in mismatched letters, “BALLS 2 THA WALL TILL U FALL.”

The letterboard is one of the many personal touches in Neoscum’s infamous tour truck. There’s a futon bolted to the wall, a bunk bed, a crow’s nest-style hammock, and entirely white leather seats. There are also Polaroids taped to the wall, which bassist Pox tells me are mostly her work. There are five or six for every stop on their tour so far, and every stop on all of their tours. All in all, the four walls of Xanadu are cluttered.

This kind of clutter wouldn’t be a surprise to any Neoscum fans - at least, not any fans who have seen the band’s social media. “They know we’re dirty,” says Pox, with an exaggerated wink. “If they follow us on Instagram, they know we’re dirty.”

“They know we don’t always do laundry,” adds Zenith, the band’s drummer. “They know a lot about us. We don’t have a great concept of TMI.”

“Or just a low threshold,” Pox says. “We’re comfortable with people seeing our true selves. If that means posting pictures of Zenith’s dirty laundry on Snapchat, then that’s what that means today.”

The band’s social media presence is a lot like the interior of Xanadu: a little cryptic, a little eclectic, incomprehensible until you look closely enough to see the pattern. Six days before the release of their fourth album _Neon Americana,_ a fan discovered that the fourth word in each installment of the band’s Snapchat story from the last month spelled out the tracklist. It’s not clear which of the band’s members masterminded this long con, and none of them own up when asked. It’s this kind of mystery that defines Neoscum: flawless execution, but for no clearly comprehensible reason.

“Of course there’s a reason,” Pox says, when I ask her about the Snapchat story. “It’s not about who did it, it’s not about the tracklist. It’s about having fun and making people pay attention. Haven’t you ever wanted someone to pay attention to you?”

  
#

 

The story behind Neoscum is like something out of a movie. Lead singer Dak Rambo was making a name for himself with country music, but he was small-time at best. Squirt Purpler, more commonly known by his stage name of Tech Wizard, was playing the keyboards in a live band on a Chicago stand-up comedy showcase. The two of them met and started recording independent experimental music. Before long, they reunited with Rambo’s old friend Zenith, a drummer from the Seattle punk scene, and met Pox, a bassist and songwriter who was shadow-writing pop hits. With the addition of Max Epstein, a folk guitarist making waves online, Neoscum was complete.

The musical tastes of Neoscum, much like the rest of the band, work despite having every reason not to. “You can go to twelve different record stores, and they’ll all have us sorted differently,” says Purpler. “I think it’s great. We’ve got a little bit of everything, we’re all over the place. Who needs to only be one thing?”

Neoscum’s first album,  _ Death Race, _ charted as a metal album, a rock album, and an indie album. Their second album,  _ ratcandy, _ landed firmly on the pop charts, and their third album  _ Time To Kill A Dragon _ was a country album. With the release of  _ Neon Americana, _ Neoscum have cemented themselves as both everything and nothing: the album was a blend of techno, R&B, and every other genre that the band had ever worked with. The album is more than two hours long, and tells the story of a road trip from coast to coast. Tracks blend seamlessly from one genre to the next, creating the image of a chaotic, cohesive nation. It  received universal acclaim after its release.

“The album was Pox’s idea,” Zenith says. Pox is the one foreign member of the band, a transplant from across the pond. She’s infamously secretive with her personal life; the closest anyone has found to a hint about who she used to be is an online demo of a song dedicated to someone named Pandora. “The first tour we did, the one after  _ Dragon _ came out _ , _ was the first time she’d ever seen most of the country. It was completely new to her, and I think she was enchanted by it.”

Pox is not the group’s only songwriter, but she is the mastermind behind album concepts. The whole group credits her with the idea for  _ Neon Americana. _ There are rumors that she had a meticulous journal, keeping notes about every city she stopped in; there are rumors that she wrote the entire album on the tour. Pox doesn’t confirm or deny any of them, either publicly or when asked. Instead, she insists that the album is a collaboration, a meeting of the minds.

The one thing she does take credit for is the idea behind the tour. “I saw all the big cities last time,” she explains, twirling a lollipop between her fingers. Xanadu is in the middle of Kansas, between tour stops, and Pox is dipping into her secret sugar stash. I have to close my eyes whenever she wants candy, because I’m not allowed to see where she keeps it. “We went to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, all the places that everyone stops. And I wrote songs about them, we all wrote songs about them. But there’s only so much of a picture that the big cities paint. So when we started planning our second tour, I said that I wanted to see smaller towns. I want to go the places that nobody else goes.”

The tour, formally titled “The Small Town Neon Americana Neoscum Second Tour Extravaganza Party” and colloquially called “the second tour” _ , _ is entirely focused on small cities and small towns. There are no stops in New York, or in Los Angeles, or in Chicago. The biggest city that Neoscum is visiting will be Rochester, Minnesota. The venues are small, and the crowds are all enthusiastic. I’m joining them for two shows in Kansas, in towns that have never had big names perform before.

The band is all enthusiastic about the concept behind the tour, all for different reasons. “I never got to go to big concerts when I was a kid,” Purpler explains. “I lived just far enough outside of all the major cities that it was too far to drive for anything less than an emergency or a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so I never saw any bands growing up. It means a lot to me that we get to give some small town kids that performance.”

For other members, it’s less personal: Rambo says, “I like driving. Anything that gets us driving is good. Those real small town ones, the ones where the pavement hasn’t been touched since 1984 and the grass looks like it’s going to crack if you touch it? That’s the good shit, baby. We’re seeing a lot of those lately, and I am loving it. Everything’s tiny, it’s the way this country is supposed to be, you know? It’s just us and those kids who get to see a cool band.”

And for Epstein, the quietest of the band? “There’s less stage fright in a bar than in a stadium.”

  
#

 

The band’s first stop is in Josephine, Kansas, and they immediately start in on a whirlwind series of pre-show rituals. Rambo drives Xanadu to the outskirts of the town, to a sign that says the town’s population, and they all pile out of the truck to take a five-man selfie next to the sign. Once they’re inside city limits, Zenith starts playing ABBA - not on the truck’s high quality sound system, but on his phone’s speaker. He doesn’t stop until they pull up outside their venue: an outdoor amphitheater for an afternoon show. Epstein recites a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Pox opens the door with her left hand and her eyes closed, and the band all take the amphitheater by storm.

They’re ruthlessly fast in their setup: Purpler talks to the venue coordinator while the rest of the crew makes sure everything is to their standards. Zenith and Epstein manage the band’s tech setup as Rambo and Pox manage the equipment. From start to finish, it takes them under thirty minutes to have everything in perfect shape.

“We don’t fuck around with these things,” Zenith says. He’s nearly as cryptic about where he came from as Pox is, but he at least has a traceable career. He has no last name to speak of, and he has never explained why he’s missing an eye. But he’s competent, both as a drummer and as the band’s self-proclaimed tech guy, and he has a reputation for being mysterious. “We’re here to do a show, we’re going to make sure it’s perfect. It’s not like it’s hard to be prepared, to get things done the way they’re supposed to be done.”

The amphitheater in Josephine is packed, not just with locals but from people in surrounding towns. There are teenagers and middle-aged men and elderly women, all sporting Neoscum merch. All of them are buzzing, talking about songs that they hope to hear and things that they hope to see. Neoscum is notoriously flashy with their concerts. It’s not unusual to see pyrotechnics, or costume changes, or people swapping instruments. One tour video, which went viral, showed Pox attempting to play Zenith’s drums with her feet in the middle of a show.

“We don’t plan anything for our actual shows,” Epstein tells me, five minutes before the curtains go up. “We have a set list, and we normally play all the same songs off of it, but if something seems unplanned, that’s because it probably is. None of us like playing by the rules, or doing things the same way every time. Not even me.”

Epstein is known for being the most relaxed of the band’s members. He’s the least likely to try and haggle with grocery store clerks (as Pox has done), share obscure knowledge of advanced physics (Zenith), get stuck on top of a telephone pole after a dare (Purpler), or win a blackjack jackpot (Rambo, Epstein’s maternal uncle). He’s the least spotlight-happy of all of them.

He’s also the most forthcoming about his personal life. Epstein graduated in the top quarter of his high school last and joined Neoscum not long afterwards. He has a sister, seven years younger, who recently received a kidney transplant. He says that his biggest inspirations are Bob Dylan and Yo-Yo Ma, and his uncle Dak. He’s the most likely of the band to be singing, humming, or playing his instrument in his spare time. He’s the mediator of debates and the filmer of shenanigans. He has a prosthetic left arm and right leg, and he refuses to let anyone call him “the disabled one” in the band.

Epstein says that his reputation as “the boring one” doesn’t bother him; if anything, it’s a relief. “Those guys are my family,” he says, echoing a sentiment that the whole band has shared at one point or another. “But they’re all kind of fucking crazy. I don’t want to be in the news for even the less weird things that they do. Except for that time Z got to be in the news for knowing thermonuclear physics, that was pretty cool.”

Sixty seconds before the curtains go up, Rambo goes around the band. He gives Pox a warm hug, Epstein a kiss on the left cheek, Zenith a kiss on the forehead, and Purpler a kiss on the right cheek. He looks at me and winks, and says something I can’t quite make out over the cheering crowd outside. I’ve only known Rambo for two hours, but I already understand the charismatic rock star allure that everyone claims he has. He seems more at ease on stage than he does off, and when the curtains rise, he shouts, “What the fuck is up, Kansas?”

Kansas lets him know what the fuck is up. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a man not even remotely cowed by thousands of people screaming at him.

  
#

 

There is a list of rules in Xanadu, taped up next to the letterboard. “It’s for you,” Purpler explained, not long after I boarded the truck. “And for everyone who visits us, but it’s mostly for you right now.”

The rules are simple. Feet on seats are fine, but shoes on seats are not. Dropping food is okay as long as you clean it up. You never challenge someone to a fight if you wouldn’t actually fight them. You don’t talk about Lil Marco - the band’s nickname for the producer Big Marco who  attempted to sue them after the release of  _ Deathrace _ . You don’t say the word “Grammy,” because it’s a jinx, and nobody needs a Grammy anyways.

The list contains nearly forty rules, and I’m sworn to privacy about most of them. “Nobody needs to know the way we do things,” Rambo says. “Not really, you know? Fans get weird. Gotta keep some things a mystery.”

The last rule on the list is  _ don’t say shit about other people’s shit in interviews. _ It’s obvious where the rule came from. On the drive from Josephine to Troy, I ask Rambo about the rule, and his lips thin. Rambo is a friendly, jovial man: before he was a rock star, he was a trucker, a country singer, and an unabashed sex worker. But there’s no humor on his face as he thinks through his response. “It was fucked that TMZ did what they did,” he says. “People are entitled to have secret personal histories if they want them. I don’t care that Morrows was up for reelection in Colorado, and I don’t care that they thought it would be okay. Digging up people’s stuff is - it makes it easy to forget that we’re people too. But we’re people too.”

Rambo is, of course, referring to  a now-infamous exposé that TMZ published, revealing a link between Purpler and incumbent Colorado governor Fayglin Morrows. The connections aren’t especially clear, but it’s obvious that Morrows was a family friend to Purpler’s parents, who were killed in a hate crime when Purpler was four. The entire band followed their newest rule to a T, and none of them publicly discussed the article or the incident, including Purpler. Morrows went on to win reelection in Colorado, although the race was  subject to a recount.

“It was hard for all of us,” says Zenith, “and by that I mean it was mostly hard for Tech, so we were all pissed. We were trying to keep him out of the limelight, trying to let him keep his past to himself.”

“I don’t think it matters where any of us are from,” says Purpler, in his only interjection into the conversation. “I know what I need to know about everything, and nobody else needs to know anything. We all know where the band’s politics stand, and we share the personal stuff that we want to.”

Neoscum is full of outspoken socialists: Epstein in particular has been  vocally critical of healthcare reform policies, and the band has made a name for themselves by participating in protest marches. And nobody has to look any further than the band’s social media to see their openness about their personal life. But the band is firm when they put down boundaries. TMZ never issued an apology to Purpler, despite the influx of fan petitions and demands for one; the fans still stood by Purpler in his wish for privacy. He later thanked them for their support in a public statement, marking the first and only real time he addressed the TMZ article directly.

It’s clear from early on that the band’s “don’t say shit” rule applies while talking to me. Zenith and Pox almost form a protective barrier around Purpler with their bodies, and even Epstein comes down from his perch in the crow’s nest to watch me. They’re defensive of one another, and as soon as the conversation moves on, everyone relaxes. It’s hard to say if they do it intentionally or subconsciously, but the meaning is clear either way: they have each other’s backs, at all times.   
  


#

 

The pre-show rituals in Troy go the same as the rituals in Josephine. This performance is the same evening, at a bar called the Electric Cowboy Lasso-Swingin’ Doogie-Wrasslin’ Party Zone Gambling Hall and Microbrewery. Rambo seems to know everyone there, from the bartender to the regulars. “That’s just Dak,” Purpler says. “He’s always like this. He has friends everywhere.”

At the Josephine concert, Purpler and Zenith switched instruments for two songs. At the Troy concert, everyone stays where they’re supposed to until the second-to-last song, when Pox takes Max’s acoustic guitar and sits in the center of the stage to sing an acoustic ballad. It’s not a good fit for the trucker bar, but they’re all rapt and silent as she sings, and  a fan’s video of the performance went viral the following day. (Eagle-eyed fans noticed that this was the song that she dedicated to the mysterious Pandora, but Pox hasn’t commented, and neither has the rest of the band.)

The most interesting part of the show comes afterwards. Strike happens in a neat fifteen-minute timeframe, and then the band is in the bar, drinking and laughing with the rest of the patrons. They’re patient and friendly with autographs and selfies, but before long, the fans clear out of the bar and leave only regular patrons. Rambo is introducing people by name to the band members, and before long they’re all piled into a corner booth, talking over each other. They eat food off of each other’s plates and poke each other and finish each other’s sentences. It lasts for several rounds and a couple of hours. “Family dinner,” Zenith calls it at one point, and it’s exactly that.

 

#

 

Rambo insists on dropping me back off at my office in Lawrence, even though I’ll get there in the wee hours of the night. He doesn’t seem at all bothered by staying up all night driving. The band goes to sleep in what seem to be normal places for them: Epstein in his crow’s nest, Pox in the passenger’s seat, Tech on the bottom bunk, Zenith on the futon. Only Rambo stays awake, and he answers my questions quietly, like his voice will wake them over the noise of the truck on the road.

“It’s impossible to describe what these people mean to me,” he says, in a candid moment. “You know, this job, it’s changed all of our lives. I’m never going to have to worry about where I’m going to stay the night again. Max, he got his sister’s operation paid for. Pox and Z and Tech, they all have opportunities to figure things out that they couldn’t have had two or three years ago. And we’re paying that forward. We’re doing these shows in little towns, it’s fucking great. Have you ever been to a small town? Some of them are awful, but some of them are just full of people who wanna be happy. And we make them happy.”

We reach Wichita at four in the morning. Rambo lets me out the back gate of the truck and tells me I’m always welcome back, as long as I’m not a dick to his people. For the next three days, I receive random texts from him: pictures of the band, videos from venues, and misspelled rough drafts of tweets that he wants me to correct. They taper off, and I’m left following along with the band through the news and through Twitter, just like the rest of the world.

My single day with Xanadu feels like a dream, an illusion of Polaroids and jokes that I only half-remember. I can’t help but wonder if that was intentional. I caught a glimpse of Neoscum as people, a fleeting glimpse that falls second to the truth that they project to the rest of the world. And then I, like the rest of the world, am paying attention to them. Just like they want me to.

  
_ Argus Armstrongman is an independent contributor to Lone Star Publications. You can follow him on Twitter @argus_asm or read more of his contributions  _ _ here. _

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr and Twitter @waveridden!


End file.
